The Need for Academic and Personal Resources for Deaf and Hard of Hearing (DHH) Students in College
In the United States, there are many reasons why one decides to pursue a college education; these include being set up for career success and becoming a learned community member to be able to contribute to and improve society. With so much weight placed on college and its purpose, the process a student goes through to select which college to attend is incredibly overwhelming, but not as overwhelming as the process of remaining in college, persisting and graduating. With that said, it is important for all those who pursue higher education to be positioned for success.
Research by the Postsecondary Education Programs Network estimated that more than 400,000 students with hearing loss attend college (Watson et al, 2007). The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has reported that most students with hearing loss are enrolled in two-year institutions (Raue & Lewis, 2011). No doubt that number has significantly grown over the years, and as a result of the Americans with Disabilities Act, all public colleges and universities must ensure deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students have equal access to all activities, regardless of funding. It is imperative that DHH students are given more than just access and accommodations; they must also be given a postsecondary environment that understands their specific needs and provides them with resources for their academic success (Johnson and Fann, 2016).
This literature review analyzes several recent studies and articles surrounding the provision of both academically-centered and socially-centered resources for DHH students in a college environment. The first few articles explore their study habits and trends in course taking, and the implications for the academic resources needed.
In College Experience for Young Adults with Hearing Loss (2012), Patricia M. Chute summarizes key takeaways for DHH students from the National Survey of Student Engagement, which “collects information at hundreds of four-year colleges and universities about first-year and senior students' participation in programs and activities that institutions provide for their learning and personal development” (National Survey for Student Engagement, 2016). The survey presents a study on four courses: biology, business, English, and psychology. Chute mentions that DHH students excel in biology because of the heavy reliance on memorization, which is a vocabulary learning strategy prominently used by DHH learners. However, challenges lie in being able to effectively present scientific findings orally. As for DHH students who major in English, they display restrictions in reading and writing proficiency due to a knowledge that is limited to Tier 2 vocabulary. DHH students who opt to study business face challenges in being able to work in groups and articulate ideas clearly using sophisticated language (both written and orally). As for those studying psychology, DHH students are stifled by a deficiency in an ability to understand other views and perspectives, which is heavily supported by reading and personal experience. Chute’s article calls for the need to provide more assistive technological or classroom accommodations for classes that rely heavily upon content presented orally.
Challenges for DHH students additionally include poor literacy and time management skills, which is also discussed in a study conducted by Albertini, Kelly, and Matchett (2012) about the personal factors that influence DHH students’ academic success. This study focused on motivation, attitude, and study habits of DHH students at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf within Rochester Institute of Technology. This institution is a state-of-the-art place of learning primarily for DHH students, in addition to Gallaudet University. Results showed that students were less confident about their abilities to prepare for class, manage time, and concentrate on assignments. They expressed concern about study habits, lower levels of verbal confidence, lower motivation to finish college, as well as less positive attitudes towards teachers compared to hearing students. The highest numbers of DHH students who reported these feelings tended to perform poorly during the first ten weeks of college. Perhaps this is a manifestation of stereotype threat (Steele, 1997), wherein DHH students internalize the stereotype that students with disabilities are inherently less intelligent.
Patterns of learning accommodations used by DHH students in postsecondary settings are explored in a study by Cawthon, Leppo, Jin Jin, and Bond (2015). Results show that, compared to the accommodations used in high school, DHH students are using less accommodations in college. Several factors explain this, such as the difference in availability and allocation of resources.
The DHH student experience in community colleges is examined in Johnson and Fann’s 2016 study, which recommends a specialized orientation for DHH students and their instructors, specialized advising, utilization of student feedback, and an increase in awareness across the campus and community about the availability of resources for DHH students. Because privacy laws prohibit K-12 schools from disclosing students’ disability status, it is imperative for DHH students to be proactive in identifying their need for accommodations, as well as for institutions to establish a well-rounded and well-advertised array of services for DHH students.
With regards to trends in courses taken, DHH students are taking more vocational and nonacademic courses than their hearing counterparts. While DHH students generally earn more credits overall, they earn a similar number of credits in academic courses when compared to hearing students. They take fewer courses in science, social science, and foreign languages. The math classes they take are more basic, which then eventually sets them on a track of not being college and career ready. This brings into question the reasons behind why DHH students tend to choose courses that teach life skills or are more vocational in nature. Perhaps it ties back to weak literacy skills in certain subject areas, but this then begs the question: “Why are literacy skills weaker among DHH students, whose reading comprehension, math, and science skills are generally several grade levels below those of hearing students?”
These aforementioned studies discuss the gaps in classroom resources for DHH students. To address this issue holistically, it is also important to examine the gaps in personal and social campus resources. The next few articles explore barriers to student success from this lens.
In Deaf college students’ attitudes toward racial/ethnic diversity, campus climate, and role models, Parasnis et al (2005) investigates students’ attitudes toward educational satisfaction, campus comfort level, campus climate, availability of role models, and perceived academic preparedness. Like many other studies being examined in this review, this study was conducted at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf. Results show that race and ethnicity matter in regards to influencing the perception of campus climate and that all minoritized deaf student communities cannot be aggregated or assumed to have the same experiences, needs, or support. For example, black DHH students responded that having minority role models on campus is more important than having deaf role models. DHH students of color expressed less satisfaction than white DHH students about campus climate and the effect that their race has on their overall experience. It is interesting to see the way DHH students of color perceive and experience their deafness and their race in relation to each other. The authors identify the need to further educate faculty, staff, and students regarding attitudes toward diversity, race, and ethnicity. Parasnis et al also suggest the need to hire more racially and ethnically diverse deaf faculty and staff. While the study provides immense insight among these subgroups within the DHH student population, it is interesting to note that international students were excluded from this analysis. Immigration status is certainly a factor that influences student experience, and the voices of this demographic might have also provided some valuable insight to this topic.
Another study conducted at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf that explores the DHH college experience is Sara A. Kersting’s Balancing Between Deaf and Hearing Worlds: Reflections of Mainstreamed College Students on Relationships and Social Interaction (1997). This study was conducted among mainstreamed DHH students who had little or no previous experience with or exposure to deaf culture or language before their arrival at college. In the context of this topic, mainstream students attend regular classes with hearing peers and use support services such as interpreting, notetaking, and tutoring. First year mainstreamed DHH students reported feelings of loneliness, alienation and separation from other deaf students due to their inability to use sign language as efficiently, as well as negative responses from deaf peers. These first year DHH students also identified other barriers to establishing relationships with both deaf and hearing students: physical factors (such as the grouping of deaf students in classrooms and separate dining facilities and residence halls) and social prejudice (when hearing students assume that mainstreamed DHH students are just like all other deaf students and incapable of what they might deem as “normal” conversation). However, after the first year of school, mainstreamed DHH students favorably reported that their signing skills improved and thus allowed them to build relationships with other deaf students, their involvement in extracurricular activities and organizations among both deaf and hearing students increased, and that they exercised the virtue of persistence. The mainstreamed DHH participants also noted that international students seemed to be very accepting of DHH students, citing their “separation” from the majority of the students on campus as something they were able to experience together, albeit in different ways. This observation about international students in the Kersting study relates to the value of international perspectives, which is missing in the previously mentioned study conducted by Parasnis et al. Kersting essentially posits that administrators and faculty should investigate the experiences of DHH students who arrive on campus without knowledge of sign language or familiarity with deaf culture, and then evaluate the programs and services needed for those students in order to feel included and validated.
This literature review also explores a very specific minoritized group among DHH students: women of color. In a study conducted by Lissa Stapleton titled When Being Deaf is Centered: d/Deaf Women of Color’s Experiences With Racial/Ethnic and d/Deaf Identities in College (2015), the author asks seven participants to describe her life growing up and her educational experiences before college. Studies such as this are essential to the study of DHH students because over time, DHH experiences have been essentialized, fixed, or stereotyped to mean that of white people. The voices and perspectives of DHH people of color have been absent from this dialogue. The study shows that most of the women who participated acknowledge, identify, and center their deaf identities more than their racial and ethnic identities. They navigate their world more easily because of the support, community, and environment on campus. This observation contrasts with the findings in the previously mentioned study about DHH attitudes toward racial/ethnic diversity, campus climate, and role models conducted by Parasnis et al. Stapleton recommends incorporating audism and hearing privilege in diversity and equity trainings across campuses for administrators, faculty, and staff.
There are two distinct features found within the Stapleton piece: the usage of the term “d/Deaf” and the inclusion of deaf critical theory (otherwise known as Deaf Crit). The upper case D refers to individuals who connect to Deaf cultural practices, the centrality of American Sign Language (ASL), and the history of the community. The lower case d refers to the audiological condition or medical severity of a person’s hearing loss. Stapleton uses “d/Deaf” because the differences are not always clearly defined in the article or by the study’s participants.
Deaf Crit is related to critical race theory, and looks at how audism impacts DHH students’ understanding of themselves as deaf people and the salience of their unequal status in society. Deaf Crit is built on four pillars: (1) centrality and intersectionality of deaf people and audism, (2) challenge of dominant hearing ideology, (3) centrality of deaf experiential knowledge, (4) commitment to social justice for deaf people.
The final reading included in this literature review is about social-emotional adjustments of DHH students, which was a study conducted by Jennifer Lukomski in 2007. Lukomski examines the differences between DHH and hearing students’ perceptions of their social-emotional adjustment as they transition to college. The study was completed by 205 DHH students and 185 hearing students. Key findings included DHH students rating themselves as experiencing more home-related social-emotional difficulties, which included struggles with parents and guardians for autonomy and independence, as well as communication difficulties; DHH students rated themselves as having significantly less coping difficulties compared to hearing students, which is a result of their ability to navigate the world and function with a disability. The most important findings in this study, however, are those among DHH females: they rate themselves significantly higher on “being worried” compared to DHH males, hearing females, and hearing males; DHH freshmen females reported a higher incidence of suicide attempts compared to DHH freshmen males. This data surrounding the DHH student experience of females is important to examine alongside the Stapleton article about DHH women of color. There is much attention to be paid to this group. In this study, Lukomski recommends more research around the relationship between social-emotional adjustment and retention rates.
After reviewing these articles, it is apparent that resources are needed by DHH students to support their college success from both an academic and personal perspective. Among those that discuss academic resources, Personal Factors That Influence Deaf College Students’ Academic Success (Albertini et al, 2011) and College and Career Readiness: Course Taking of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Secondary School Students (Nagle et al, 2016) provide the greatest contributions to this topic.
Because DHH students have reported they are less confident about their abilities to prepare for class, practice effective time management skills, and concentrate on classwork, it is essential to foster positive attitudes toward learning and teachers well before college at the elementary and high school level. Moreover, there should be a focus on providing resources around teaching effective study habits and test taking techniques (Albertini et al, 2011). A limitation of this study is that it only applies to DHH students in two-year associate’s degree programs and the results only reflect the initial academic success during the students’ first quarter of study. As such, while it is absolutely insightful, the study is not the most accurate depiction of overall DHH academic deficiencies, as it does not include a diverse array of institution types.
The article by Nagle et al provides key insights into what courses DHH students are choosing to study, and this informs where there is an opportunity to provide extra academic resources to promote academic success. Having identified the subject areas experiencing the most deficiencies (science, social studies, foreign languages, math), this study makes the argument for additional resources specifically in these subjects to narrow the gap in subject area literacy between DHH and hearing students.
Among those that discuss personal resources for DHH studets, Balancing Between Deaf and Hearing Worlds: Reflections of Mainstreamed College Students on Relationships and Social Interaction (Kersting, 1997) and Deaf College Students’ Attitudes Toward Racial/Ethnic Diversity, Campus Climate, and Role Models (Parasnis et al, 2005) provide the greatest insight to this issue. They are important to this dialogue because they intentionally take into account the input of DHH students who experience being minoritized “others” - both as students of color and as DHH. When analyzing this topic of student experience, it is incredibly important to acknowledge the danger of a single story (Adichie, 2009) and understand that there are multiple pieces that make up the whole.
Kersting discusses the power of social interaction in college and the effect it has on student success. She presents important suggestions around personalizing the experiences of DHH students with resources they are prescribed, ensuring they are truly in line with the personal needs of the student that will promote a sense of belonging on campus. Unlike the study by Parasnis et al, however, Kersting does not intentionally study race as a factor in her study.
Comfort level at a campus is incredibly important for all, and arguably more so for students with disabilities. The study by Parasnis et al approaches the issue of campus resources in the form of indirect influence. In other words, they propose the provision of resources that DHH students can see, can be inspired and influenced by, and that eventually lead to higher performance and retention rates. Diversity, campus climate, and role models are examples of these resources. However, both of these studies by Kersting and Parasnis et al were conducted at the same institution, and thus present a limited scope of perspectives.
There has been much research on tracking college education outcomes among students with regards to socioeconomic status, race and ethnicity, aptitude and intelligence, and more. However, research around students with disabilities still remains a growing area. This literature review explored articles and studies regarding the experiences of deaf and hard of hearing students in higher education, and posits that both educational and personal resources are necessary to support their academic success.
References:
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